Love Has No Labels

I came across this video around Valentine’s Day, “Love Has No Labels.” Curious, I followed the link and was captivated by what was two dancing skeletons behind an x-ray screen. From first glance, it was two twins, two mirrors of one another–same skulls, same leg bones, same hips, same arms wrapped around one another’s necks.

Then the two people stepped from behind the screen–two women.

What fascinated me the most about the video was how this simple screen seemed to erase people’s notions about what love was. When two nameless, raceless, faceless skeletons embraced, it was beautiful. Yet these perceptions seemed to change as the skeleton’s identities were unmasked.

I know that posting something like this on my blog is a risk. This is a controversial topic, and a topic that many feel isn’t a part of the classroom. But I disagree. I think that in today’s society, and especially in today’s classrooms, this message is important. Whether a lesbian couple, two fathers raising a son, different races, contradicting religions, opposing beliefs, old, or young, love is love.

In my personal life I’ve experienced and seen love in many forms—people with completely different ideas and beliefs that work together on a project, two males who can love each other just as fully and as deeply as a heterosexual couple, a child raised by two mothers who is as healthy and functioning as any other.

I am choosing to make this video a part of my blog, not to endorse a cause that I believe in, or to force what I believe on others. I am simply hoping to encourage this idea for my own future classroom, and other classrooms. In an educational setting, a teacher cannot discriminate, cannot judge, cannot be biased on race, gender, religion, beliefs, or choice of lover. Schools should be safe havens for students, no matter who they are or who they choose to be with.

When the two people stood behind the screen, they were identical. Two human beings.

In the end, love is love. And love has no labels. This is something that needs to be a part of the education world.